An Experimental Examination of Facial Morphing In Advertising

Ron Faber, Brittany R. L. Duff and Yulia Lutchyn

Abstract

Morphing of images has begun to find its way into advertising.  One of the most famous icons in advertising, Betty Crocker, is now a morphed composite of photos submitted by 75 different contest winners.  It was hoped that this would make Betty Crocker an image that everyone could relate to and that perceived similarity would influence brand preference and choice.

Technological innovation may make the potential for morphing in advertising even greater in the future.  To maximize perceived similarity, an advertiser may be able to morph individual consumers with a model in an ad and deliver this customized ad to the appropriate consumer.  Evidence shows that this morphing can be done at a level below the average consumers’ conscious awareness, but still sufficient to produce potential effects.  For example, voters who were shown pictures of candidates that had been morphed with their own photo were more likely to support these candidates than those shown candidate pictures morphed with other people or unaltered.  The current study was an effort to determine if this technique would be effective in advertising, and if so, why.

Undergraduates participated in two studies conducted a week apart.  In the first study they had their photo taken and filled out a personality assessment form for what they were told was a study of how accurate others were in assessing personality from photos in a facebook website.  They were told the second study was about advertising and they saw a couple of ads and asked to evaluate the ad and brand.  One ad contained a model that was morphed with either themselves, morphed with a classmate, or not morphed.  The morphs were undetectable to the participants at an explicit level.  

As predicted, participants in the self-morph condition projected more of their own personality traits onto the brand than those in the other conditions.  A significant gender by morphing interaction was found for attitudes toward the ad and brand.  Among women, those in the other-morph condition hadmore positive attitudes than women in the self-morph (or non-morph conditions.  In contrast, men in the other-morph condition demonstrated lower attitudes toward the ad than did those seeing the ad with either the self-morphed or non-morphed model.

Full Paper [pdf]

About the Authors

RONALD J. FABER is Professor of Mass Communications, Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Director of the Communication Research Division in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota.  He is the former editor of the Journal of Advertising and is currently a member of the Editorial Review Boards of several leading journals. His current research interests focus on new media formats and techniques including advergames, blogs, avatars, and morphing as well as on the study of compulsive buying, impulse buying, and self-regulation.  He is the co-editor of a recent book titled, “Advertising, Promotion and the New Media.”  His research has appeared in numerous academic journals and has been cited in stories appearing in major media publications such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall St. Journal, Forbes, Money, and Psychology Today.

BRITTANY R.L. DUFF is a doctoral student in Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota.  Prior to that she worked as an associate account planner at Campbell Mithun where her clients included Burger King, General Mills, H & R Block and MN Dept. of Health.  While at Campbell Mithun she led the creation and implementation of Atomic Hotdog, a tool for online youth polling and panels.  Her current research interests focus on neuropsychology and persuasion, particularly the effect of perception and attention on affect as well as implicit perceptual processing.   Her research has been presented at the American Marketing Association Marketing and Public Policy Conference and the Association for Consumer Research, Asia Pacific Conference.   

YULIYA A. LUTCHYN is a PhD Student in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota. She has professional experience in non-profit PR, and is currently working as a teaching assistant for strategic communication classes. Her current research interests focus on implicit information processing, issues of self-control and decision-making. Her co-authored research was recently presented at the AMA Marketing and Public Policy Conference.